Rain
by ncfan
Summary: Among other things, Elwing decides what to name her children.


[CN: Childbirth, depression, somewhat oblique references to addiction]

I own nothing.

* * *

It was raining. Not one of those brutal winter storms, a tempest of rain and sleet and snow. There was only unenthusiastic rain splattering on the rooftops, against the windows and the shutters and the streets. There was no risk of flooding, unless the rain continued for days on end. It was just a dreary, unenthusiastic storm. The sky was a murky gray.

It fit Elwing's mood perfectly, as it happened.

The midwife Elwing went to had been shocked to discover that she was with child. Yes, it was true that Elwing had the appearance of an adult (If a diminutive one). However, Edhil were not counted as fully grown until their fiftieth or even their hundredth year. The youngest nís known to have given birth and survived the experience was forty at the time. Elwing was twenty-nine when she was discovered to be with child.

The midwife, a survivor of the second sack of Menegroth, had muttered (no doubt believing that Elwing could not hear her) that one so young as Elwing should not be _wed_, let alone facing motherhood. "It was bad enough with Dior," she said under her breath, shaking her head. "At least he was not called upon to carry his children himself, and the late Queen was a lady of mature years." A split-second later, the midwife seemed to remember that she was speaking of Elwing's parents, blushed and fell silent, but Elwing said nothing in response.

Those words needled, but they meant nothing in comparison to the emptiness at her side.

Elwing was told that her pregnancy would be difficult. She was told that on account of her slender stature, childbirth would be a terrible strain, maybe even life-threatening. She was told that if she was able to carry her child to birth, even if she survived childbirth, she could very well sicken and die later.

Elwing barely cared. She heard the words, but it was as though they were droplets of rain rushing to the earth, mingling together and meaning nothing. Far more aware was she of Eärendil's absence. He had taken to the seas again, searching desperately for the Straight Road. Elwing had no means of contacting him, and knew that he considered his cause a just one, but he should have been _here_. He had a child, and she needed him; he should have been _here._

She felt alone. Even as courtiers and the common people alike gave the Sindarin Queen their congratulations on her impending motherhood, and she couldn't even force a small smile as she nodded in response—she just felt empty. Wearing the Silmaril helped. Wearing the Silmaril inspired forgetfulness, or perhaps it simply brought her to a state where she still remembered, but was free of caring. It bathed her in warmth and ignorance, and she forgot her cares. (_Taking it off was torture. Elwing remembered again, _really _remembered and felt the weight of it like a millstone around her neck. It was like waking to the bitterest of winter's cold. So she removed the Silmaril but rarely, ever wearing it around her neck, and all were in awe of her radiance, whispering that this was truly Lúthien's descendant._)

Childbirth was just as grueling as it had been described to her. Elwing spent what must have been days (she was later told that it had been twelve hours) lost in a haze of pain. She gasped, she moaned, she clutched at her bedposts and screamed.

Was it really so painful for every nís? Did every nís feel as though she was going to be split in two when she gave birth to her children?

Elwing wondered, in her rare lucid moments as she was giving birth, if Idril had felt this way when she had Eärendil. She wondered if Idril, who always seemed as one who could endure any pain with a smile or at least with determination, had felt that she would die from this pain.

Surely Lúthien had never felt this way. The nís who prevailed against Sauron and even Morgoth in his place of strength could not have seriously believed that childbirth, however agonizing, would claim her life. She was one who had died and lived again. Surely she knew that this pain would pass.

And surely Melian had never felt this way. A Maia would never taste the lips of death. A Maia had no need to fear death. Maiar were not like Edhil. Sometimes, Elwing wondered if Melian had ever even been touched by pain.

Next to them, Elwing really was quite pathetic. It was not death that she feared. Death was no source of fear. What she feared was the pain never ending, what she feared was living with this pain forever, as her blood spilled to the ground and her skin ripped and what little strength she had left her.

Then, suddenly, it was over.

It was over, and Elwing was left with her exhaustion, sweat-soaked and gasping, lying spread-eagle on the bed in the birthing chamber. The pain was leaving her in waves, quickly enough that if she had known more, she might have been alarmed. But it did not matter.

Twins.

Elwing knew that there was too much thin, piercing wails being raised up in this room for just one child, and the midwife's verdict only confirmed what she thought. Twins. Instead of one child, Elwing had twin boys. Twins.

Hours passed. Elwing recovered from childbirth far more quickly than was apparently considered typical (It was whispered that this was perhaps the blood of Melian showing itself at last, and she tried to ignore the whisperers). Elwing washed and changed her clothes; her newborn children were washed as well, and Glessil, the nís Elwing had settled upon to be their nurse (or had settled upon to be her _child's _nurse), had fed them and put them down to sleep.

_I'll have to find another cradle_. Elwing stood over the large cradle her twin sons had been placed in. Glessil had told her which one was older—the one asleep on the right, the one bearing a slightly greater resemblance to his mother had come into the world first. She stared at them, numb and quiet, stared at these two pale, tiny infants, as they slept the peaceful sleep of the young and ignorant. A muttered roll of thunder sounded in the distance, but they did not even stir.

She wondered if fate was playing with her again.

Was it kindness or cruelty to give twin sons to a nís who had lost twin brothers?

Elwing had not really wanted children. She greeted the news with apathy, but she had not wanted children. The world was not what it once was. What safety and security they had once possessed was gone. The Havens of Sirion was a city one step away from a refugee camp, a city built with haste and poor materials, crumbling as a result. Morgoth held sway over much of Beleriand, and Fëanor's four surviving sons were a constant source of danger and worry as well. If either decided to crush Sirion, they could do so easily. Who would be cruel enough to intentionally bring a child into such a world?

These two, they would grow up with only their parents for close family, and had only distant kin that lived out of reach for their mother's kin, and Kinslayers for their father's. Dior and Nimloth would never know their grandchildren. Lúthien and Beren, Thingol and Melian, they would never know their descendants.

And her sons would never know their forbears either. Just as Elwing had lived and grown up in ruin, so too would her sons. To Elwing, the glory of Doriath at its height was a distant memory that had been a fading dream even before it was destroyed. To her sons, it would be the subject of stories and history. Menegroth, that city of a thousand caves would be a legend to them, not a fact. Even Elwing, who had lost Doriath so young that it was barely a matter of memory to her, felt the difference between her and her sons like a chasm stealing away the ground at her feet.

And _twins_, too. The High Queen of the Sindar was mother to twin boys, just as her father had been father to twin boys. Twins were rare among the Edhil, and so rare amongst the Sindar that there were plenty who would look upon this as more significant than it already was.

There were some who believed in reincarnation, and would say that Eluréd and Elurín had come into the living world again in the form of Elwing's sons. Elwing herself believed in rebirth. Lúthien and Beren had been reborn. She believed that the dead could live again. But dead Edhil were reborn across the sea in a place that seemed myth-like to Elwing, for all that she knew many who had originated there. And the reborn (the re-_embodied_, the Noldor called them) were given bodies identical to the ones they had worn in their past life. They didn't return as literally having been born again.

Elwing wondered, though, if her sons would come to resemble their uncles as they grew. Never mind that she would have no way of spotting the similarities. Eluréd and Elurín had been so young when they were lost—no way to know what they would have been like as adults—and Elwing could barely remember them at all. The memories she clung to in her head were a bright shriek of laughter and pattering footsteps on stone floors. That was all she had of them. No one knew what had become of the twin princes of Doriath, in the end.

She wondered what her brothers would have said, to see their sister's sons.

As Elwing leaned closer over her sleeping newborn sons, she felt not the comforting weight of the Silmaril around her throat as she might have. She had stowed the Nauglamír with its jewel in her bedchamber, fearing that someone would steal it as she gave birth, and its absence made her ache. After a few moments, though, it occurred to her that she had yet to give her children names.

The Exiles gave their children two names. Once, they had been a father-name and a mother-name, both in Quenya, but these days, Exiles gave their children two names, one in Quenya that was not commonly used, and one in Sindarin, which was typically used as their public names. However, the Sindar only gave their children one name, usually decided upon by their father.

Eärendil was not here. There was no telling when he would return. He could not name his children. He did not even know they existed. It went against tradition, but Elwing could not wait for him, could not wait for him to return to give their children names. They would not just go nameless for the possibly months it could be before Eärendil returned.

As her father had named his sons in honor of Elu Thingol, it might have been considered meet for Elwing to do the same. However, she balked at the very thought. She was her father's daughter. She did not have to follow his example in all things.

No, better to use the element 'El' of her own name. They were her sons. It was acceptable for the sons of the High Queen to share an element of her name.

Elwing first turned her gaze to her younger son. Rain splattered on the windows and she thought of the sea churning outside, the waves crashing upon the rocks, the foam splattered across the sand.

Elros.

Then, she turned her attention to her elder son.

Elwing's mind was flooded with the stories she had been told of Menegroth and Doriath in its glory. She saw in her mind's eye great vaulted ceilings. She saw high ceilings that seemed to hold the host of the heavens, iridescent stones embedded in the rock that glimmered and sparkled in torchlight like stars.

Elrond.

_I only pray that you will forgive me for giving you the burden of countless dead. I only pray that you will forgive me for burdening you with a name that hearkens to our desolation._

* * *

Edhil—Elves (singular: Edhel)  
Nís—woman (plural: nissi)


End file.
